Skype's decision to release Intel-only features on its newest software refresh may have been a poor idea

Last month we wrote a small piece about the upcoming Skype 2.0 features that are only enabled for Intel processors. AMD is hoping to add another spear to its ranks by demanding Skype documents that prove or disprove Intel provided incentives to Skype for this favor. Intel denies the allegations.

A Skype executive declined to comment earlier this month when asked whether the company had tested the performance of its software on both Intel's and AMD's dual-core chips. An Intel representative confirmed that there are no instructions that specifically enhance the performance of voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) software like Skype's in Intel's dual-core chips.

This is not the first time this year for an AMD-Intel legal battle. AMD has been building anti-trust cases against Intel in Japan, the US and Korea for over a year, claiming that Intel leverages its buyers and distributors to not carry AMD products. Of course, AMD's 21.4% marketshare is looking pretty good to the company right now, monopoly or not.

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ipods are bought only because it's trendy, not because they're that much better than alternative much cheaper mp3 players. To answer your question, yes AMD chips really are that much better than current Intel chips, especially their dual core solutions.

imo you're wrong. i've bought the three latest generations of the "real" ipod and the reason is most certainly not because i wanna feel trendy. all other mp3 players that i've tried has a ui that simply cannot compare with the ipod's ui.

Offtopic, but I absolutely loathe the iPod UI / music management. I already have all my music organized by folder -- I don't want to have to go through and create a 'playlist' for each folder if I want to easily find all my music by X artist. Just let me drag-and-drop my folders of music, and play one folder at a time like many other players do.

I only have an iPod because I got one free during that whole 'freeipods' craze :)

On an iPod you need only navigate Music->Artist and you have all the songs by each artist.

The strength of the music management, which you aren't taking advantage of, is that iTunes will by default organize your music (by album, artist, and genre), exactly the same way that your OS manages your harddrive.

You don't go out of your way to organize inodes, sectors, tracks, and file fragments, right? You let the OS handle it.

Another strength you don't seem to want to take advantage of is Smart Playlists, in which all it takes to create a playlist of X artist is to create a rule in a filter "music by Artist X".

And a weakness you do want to take advantage of is to manually manage your music. In this day and age you want to go through all your folders, one by one, and drag and drop, instead of letting iTunes autosync (whether it be by playlist, artist, genre, album, playcount, or rating, since you get to decide).

For example if by playlist you can do the following:
All songs in the following two playlists:
All songs unrated
All songs rated 3 or higher